Researchers’ and Experiencers’ Descriptions of Near-Death Experiences: In Search of a Conceptual Model
Journal of Near-Death Studies 2023 DOI: 10.17514/jnds-2023-41-3-p169-201 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Survey Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 200 |
| Population | Near-death researchers and near-death experiencers |
| Topics | Near-death experience |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key findings | Researchers and experiencers agreed on the most common physical circumstances, phenomenological features, and aftereffects of NDEs, allowing a model brief conceptual description to be proposed. |
Abstract
Near-death experiences (NDEs) have been known for millennia and studied rigorously for the past 50 years.In that time, scholars have developed comprehensive tabulations of NDEs' commonly associated physical circumstances, phenomenological features, and aftereffects, as well as quantitative scales to measure the occurrence and depth of NDEs.Yet despite this extensive research literature, no one has proposed a simple, widely acceptable conceptual description of what an NDE is.Consequently, when asked by interviewers or members of a lay audience for a brief statement as to what NDEs are, researchers have had no consensually agreed-upon answer.In this study, I sought to identify an acceptable conceptual description of NDEs by surveying 100 neardeath researchers recruited from academic indexing databases and 100 neardeath experiencers recruited primarily from a vetted experiencer database, as to how they would characterize NDEs in a brief, "sound-bite" statement.Researchers and experiencers agreed on the most common NDE associated physical circumstances, phenomenological features, and aftereffects, from which I propose a model brief conceptual description.
Comparable studies
Other cross-sectional and survey studies on near-death experience, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fantasy Proneness Correlates With the Intensity of Near-Death Experience Individuals who have experienced a near-death experience (classical or NDE-like) and... | 2018 | Cross-sectional survey | n = 228 |
| A systematic analysis of distressing near-death experience accounts Individuals who had a near-death experience and wrote down their account | 2019 | Cross-sectional study | n = 123 |
| Reduced death threat in near-death experiencers Adults who had near-death experiences, came close to death without NDE, or never came... | 1992 | Cross-sectional study | n = 290 |
| Near-Death Experiences in a Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic Population Psychiatric outpatients | 2003 | Cross-sectional survey | n = 832 |
| Near-Death States Reported in a Sample of 50 Misusers Previous ketamine misusers who reported a ketamine-related near-death experience | 2010 | Cross-sectional survey | n = 50 |
Citations in the library
Cites 7
- The Near-Death Experience Scale The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease June 1, 1983
- Near-death experiences in non-life-threatening events and coma of different etiologies Frontiers in Human Neuroscience May 27, 2014
- Guidelines and standards for the study of death and recalled experiences of death––a multidisciplinary consensus statement and proposed future directions Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences February 18, 2022
- Making Sense of Near-Death Experience Research: Circumstance Specific Alterations of Consciousness Anthropology of Consciousness March 1, 2019
- Sawing the branch of near‐death experience research: A critical analysis of Parnia et al.’s paper Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences June 21, 2022
and 2 more in the library